Colleges across the country use campus disciplinary boards to pass judgment on students accused of violent crimes, including rape and assault. Sometimes, schools handle crime and punishment without ever reporting violations to police. Most cases never go to court. A joint investigation by The Dispatch and the Student Press Law Center of Arlington, Va., found that campus judicial systems, operating in secret, often impose light sanctions for serious infractions: sexual assaults, physical assaults resulting in serious injuries, robberies and other violent crimes. Some of the punishment amounts to little more than writing a paper.

The University of Toledo found a student responsible for his role in the stabbing death of his roommate, but he wasn't expelled from the school or charged criminally.

The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh found a student responsible for sexual assault and gave him a written reprimand, kicked him out of his dorm for a month and ordered him not to have any minors as guests.

After Miami University found a student responsible for assaulting one woman and stealing another woman's pizza on the southwestern Ohio campus, it placed him on probation and ordered him to write an essay.

Colleges across the country use campus disciplinary boards to pass judgment on students accused of violent crimes, including rape and assault. Sometimes, schools handle crime and punishment without ever reporting violations to police. Most cases never go to court.

A joint investigation by The Dispatch and the Student Press Law Center of Arlington, Va., found that campus judicial systems, operating in secret, often impose light sanctions for serious infractions: sexual assaults, physical assaults resulting in serious injuries, robberies and other violent crimes. Some of the punishment amounts to little more than writing a paper.

Both victims and the students accused of these violations have said the system is unfair and broken.

The investigation also showed that most schools either don't understand or refuse to follow federal and state laws that make certain records in these cases public. So if you're a parent or student interested in a case, chances are good that you'll never see the results.

>> Read more of The Dispatch's investigation of crime punishment on U.S. college campuses

The U.S. Department of Education enforces the student-privacy law that is frequently and improperly used to restrict access, and it has been criticized by many - even the law's author - for applying the law incorrectly. Officials with the department declined multiple requests for an interview to address their policies and the findings of this investigation.

In many ways, campus-conduct boards act like criminal courts. But those acting as judge and jury in these private proceedings are not lawyers. They are college administrators, students and faculty volunteers with little or no legal training.

Between the scales of campus justice hang heavy implications: These panels have the authority to expel students or let those accused of violent acts stay on campus - sometimes causing great distress for victims who also remain there.

As part of this investigation, The Dispatch/SPLC asked 110 colleges, including the 13 public universities in Ohio and two of their branch campuses, to provide disciplinary records for cases involving violent crimes.

Federal student-privacy rules explicitly allow colleges to release the names of students who are found responsible for a crime of violence. Still, more than 75 percent of schools did not provide any documents - even in states where open-records laws require colleges to release such information to the public.

Only 25 colleges provided records.

Collectively, those 25 colleges found students responsible for a violent offense in 1,970 cases since 2010. A total of 152 students were expelled. Five students who were found responsible for sexual assaults weren't suspended, expelled or even placed on probation; they essentially were given a pass.

Students faced criminal charges in only seven of 158 sexual-assault cases.

Presented with the newspaper's findings, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said his office will conduct a sweeping examination of how the state's public universities use their student disciplinary boards and train their members.

Even in a past role as a county prosecutor, DeWine said, he noticed that schools too often were reluctant to report criminal allegations to police.

"To me, as a parent who has sent eight different children to college, what I expect is a safe environment," said DeWine, whose office serves as both the state's chief law-enforcement agency and as the attorney for Ohio's public universities. "I expect those who have knowledge of something that would indicate it's not safe to make that public, and certainly to notify the students and to notify the parents of the students."

That often does not happen, as was reported in September in the first installment of Campus Insecurity, now online at Dispatch.com/CampusCrime.

The results of the campus judicial process are virtually never revealed.

Most colleges refuse to release records that would show which students were found responsible and how they were punished.

About half of the Ohio schools initially refused to provide the information requested by The Dispatch. That forced the newspaper to ask DeWine to intervene. It still took weeks - months in some cases - for the schools to turn over the records.

The only Ohio school that didn't fully comply with the records request was Ohio State University. Officials there said they don't keep records in a way that allows them to comply with the records request.

Private schools may release disciplinary information to the public but aren't required by law to do so. The Dispatch/SPLC asked dozens of private schools across the U.S. to take a survey about their disciplinary process - seeking aggregate statistics about cases by violation and without names attached - and not one agreed to complete it.

Those who work in campus judicial systems essentially ask the public to trust that they're doing justice.

Some said it's challenging because they often face cases that are not black and white. But they say that, most of the time, they get it right.

"The really complex cases, like sexual assaults, are hard. Prosecutors won't take them on, yet we're expected to and required to," said Andrea Goldblum, a former conduct officer for Ohio State who is now a consultant for Margolis Healy and Associates, a national campus-safety firm.

Critics say that colleges simply are unequipped to handle serious cases on their own.

Their training is very limited, said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil-liberties group in Philadelphia.

"That is not a recipe for justice," he said. "That is a recipe for error, and it really should be deeply troubling to all of us."

Soft punishments

Even after the funeral director's work was finished, Sheila Galat could see the slash on her son's hand. It was a defensive wound, the coroner had said, like her son tried to block the thrust of a knife.

Two other cuts to his neck proved fatal. Stabbed by assailant, the coroner wrote. Homicide.

It happened in 2012 at the University of Toledo, where Josiah Galat was a student. He and a friend were rooming together in a campus dormitory over winter break. They had both taken a powerful hallucinogenic drug called 25i, according to university police records. One had a hunting knife. They fought in a stairwell of the residence hall, police said. Both were stabbed.

By the time help arrived, it was over.

A police officer found Galat's body behind the dormitory. He was 20. His roommate, Erik Littleton, then 19, of Detroit, had collapsed along a nearby road. He was critically injured but survived. At the hospital, police noted that Littleton had no visible wounds on his hands.

The case went before a Lucas County grand jury, but no one was charged. In an interview with university police, Littleton said he ran away after Galat stabbed him. He suggested that Galat inflicted his own wounds.

In a separate, campus disciplinary process, the university found Littleton responsible for his role in the stabbing. Campus administrators cited him for violating rules that prohibit weapons, drugs and physical or verbal abuse or harassment.

His punishment: a one-year suspension, banishment from the dorms, 100 hours of community service and a 10-page paper.

"They have taken what could be a horrific crime and treated it like a grade-school fight with this type of punishment. It's virtually a slap on the hand," said Josiah's father, Mike, of Lexington, near Mansfield. "Everybody uses the buzzwords 'the punishment fits the crime.' That's not the case here."

Outcomes of judicial boards vary widely from campus to campus and even case to case within some schools, the Dispatch/SPLC investigation found.

In contrast to the Toledo case, students accused of trespassing at other colleges have received longer suspensions than Littleton's. Universities have expelled students for violations even after they were cleared by criminal courts. At Toledo, three students have been expelled since 2010 for property crimes, such as theft or destruction of property.

Some schools are more likely to expel than others. The University of Akron has expelled 41 students since 2010, records show. The University of Cincinnati, which has almost 10,000 more students, expelled five during that span.

"It probably has to do with either the philosophy of the school or the philosophy of the hearing officer or the board," said Goldblum, the consultant and former conduct officer at Ohio State.

"Some might say: 'You've done something violent. You no longer have the right to be here. You've given up that opportunity.' Others might have the thought that: 'We want to give people a second chance.'"

Some colleges rely on reflection papers as a form of punishment for serious violations. In all, judicial boards ordered students to write essays about their violations in 394 cases, more than half of which involved physical or sexual assaults. In the vast majority of those cases, any additional punishment was no greater than probation.

At the University of Central Florida, a student who assaulted a police officer was suspended and told to write a paper in the voice of that officer. An Ohio University student who kicked a police officer also wrote an essay.

"It's really hard to see how these panels are able to consistently reach fair and reliable findings when, realistically, they don't really know what they're doing," said Cohn, of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

That's how Mitchell Evans felt about how his case was treated.

In the fall of 2010, Evans thought he was among friends at a Miami University party in Oxford, Ohio, when he was attacked by several students after a game of beer pong. They beat his face bloody and broke some teeth before he managed to get back to his apartment - where one of the men from the party forced his way in and assaulted him again.

The incident led to charges of aggravated burglary and assault against Joseph Pfeifer, who was 19 at the time, and assault against Zach Pfeifer, 20. The two listed a home address in Mason, and both pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges. The school's punishment was probation, alcohol education and to write an essay. When reached for comment, Joseph said he didn't assault Evans. Zach could not be reached for comment.

Miami issued similar punishment when a student kicked and wrestled with a pregnant female police officer, and when one female student struck another at an anti-sexual-assault rally.

All of those cases resulted in criminal charges. None of those cases warranted a university suspension as part of the final punishment.

"I don't think the punishment fits what happened in my case or others where people are getting hurt," said Evans, 24, of Mason, now a student at the University of Cincinnati. "When your face gets beat in, it can have a big impact on your education and everything else."

Miami officials said they need flexibility to determine punishments for complex cases.

"I always say, you have to walk in our shoes to hear our cases and to make a determination as to what is an appropriate outcome," said Susan Vaughn, director of the office of Ethics and Student Conflict Resolution at Miami. "I have to use my best judgment in cases and decide on what I believe is best for the student, the university, other students on the campus and, of course, victims in those cases."

Crimes unknown

During his tenure at Miami, Antonio Charles was known to city police and university conduct officials.

The problem was that the authorities didn't always share with one another all that they knew. He was eventually expelled from school for sexual misconduct, but not before being linked to other cases of sexual misconduct.

It happened in 2008, 2009 and 2011, according to city and university police records and a woman who said she was one of his victims.

The cases in some ways illustrate what some experts say is a broader shortcoming of the campus judicial process:

Complaints of misconduct don't always reach conduct officers. Rigid policies or too many layers of bureaucracy between multiple offices at a college can lead to communication gaps. And even when local police investigate, the findings don't always make their way to campus officials.

Charles could not be reached for comment.

In 2008, Miami officials were notified by a local hospital that a female student had been treated for an alleged sexual assault involving Charles. The woman and her family didn't file a police report. College officials investigated but decided not to proceed with disciplinary action because they said they had no evidence.

"In many cases, it's just two people, and you have no other evidence," said Robin Parker, general counsel at Miami. "If that alleged victim doesn't come forward, you can't make a case."

In 2009, members of Charles' fraternity told Oxford police that their fraternity brother was videotaping his sexual encounters with Miami students without their knowledge. The fraternity kicked out Charles for his behavior, which led to a voyeurism investigation headed by Oxford Police Sgt. Geoff Robinson.

A university police officer helped Robinson download the images from Charles' laptop computer but didn't share the findings with university administrators, who said they didn't know about the voyeurism investigation until after Charles was expelled two years later.

Parker said no one told Miami officials that he had been kicked out of his fraternity house, nor did anyone ask questions when he unexpectedly asked to move back into a dorm. University officials said they don't question such a request.

Asked why his officer or department didn't ask about the voyeurism investigation and inform school officials, John McCandless, chief of the Miami Police Department said, "Typically, they do their investigations, and we do ours."

Robinson said the university police officer who assisted him in Charles' investigation was provided a written synopsis of the case and was also briefed verbally about it. "He knew what was the case was about," Robinson said. "Whether he shared it with other people at Miami, I don't know."

No law or regulation requires reporting between police and conduct boards.

No charges were filed because authorities couldn't identify the women in the videos.

When the 2011 assault victim came to police, Robinson again found himself investigating Charles.

This time, a Miami freshman went to Oxford police and said she opened her eyes on an earlier morning and asked the guy lying next to her what happened and how she ended up in his bed.

"What do you mean? You don't remember we had sex three times last night?" she said Charles told her. The Dispatch generally does not name victims of sexual assault.

The woman, who said she was a virgin before that night in October 2011, burst into tears. The last thing she remembered was feeling sick after Charles handed her an alcoholic shot shortly before she and her friends left a bar near closing time. And Charles, who she knew vaguely through a school choir, offered to take her to his home.

She was treated at a hospital for internal injuries. And she learned that another student reported that she had been sexually assaulted by the same person the previous night.

Those reports triggered a disciplinary hearing about six weeks later, and Charles was found responsible for sexual assault and expelled, according to public records obtained from the university.

At the same time, police charged Charles with sexual battery.

Butler County Prosecutor Michael T. Gmoser said he decided not to take the case to a grand jury because of a lack of evidence that the freshman had been drugged and for inconsistent statements from witnesses.

"If I had evidence there was Rohypnol (a drug commonly used in date rape) involved, it would have changed the case," Gmoser said.

Parker said Miami lacked sufficient information to consider dismissing Charles before the assault reported in 2011.

"If we had known more, we could have done more," she said.

No small matters

Colleges have always relied on their own disciplinary systems to punish students for offenses such as cheating on tests or plagiarism.

But increasingly, colleges are asked to make judgments about non-academic violations that have major implications for campus safety, said Laura Bennett, the president-elect of the Association for Student Conduct Administration, in College Station, Texas.

Her group trains and supports student-affairs staff members and has about 3,100 members at more than 1,500 institutions.

Campus-conduct offices exist to enforce school rules and guidelines, which vary widely. Cases can end quickly if a student accepts responsibility. But in other cases, students can choose to go before a judicial panel.

Changes in federal education rules from 2011 require colleges to use a "preponderance of evidence" standard in all sexual-assault cases. That means schools must decide whether a student "more likely than not" committed an offense.

Some colleges previously used a higher standard of evidence, but now many apply the "preponderance of evidence" bar to all campus discipline.

That same federal rule also requires schools to "respond promptly and effectively to sexual violence against students," which can overlap criminal investigations.

"I very much think that law enforcement should be investigating rapes, and courts should be determining if rape actually happened," Bennett said. "But we're left in the middle of the reality of two people who are trying to go to school together, and the rest of the campus community, and we can't not deal with it."

In the fall of 1996, the two dated briefly before he began to stalk and threaten her, telling her when she tried to break up with him that, "if I cannot have you, no one else will, either," Heinz said.

While he never got physical with her, he made such frightening threats that they prompted her mother to want to look into his background.

She learned that it wasn't the first time he had made threats. Heinz read through nearly two dozen reports in which men and women accused Steven Breen of physical and sexual assault, including one woman who said he tried to sexually assault her with a wrench. Breen, who lived in Florida at the time, could not be located for comment.

Heinz easily obtained those records from police in Tallahassee, Fla., and from police at Florida State University - the college that her daughter and the man attended.

But when she asked the university why, after suspending the man once, why it allowed him to enroll again, Heinz said she got no answers. Disciplinary records, they told her, were protected by the federal education privacy law. Heinz was appalled.

"I didn't realize a disciplinary hearing was considered part of his education process," Heinz remembers thinking at the time.

Since 1974, most student records have been confidential under FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Colleges that want federal money, such as Pell Grants, must agree to keep private any records "directly related" to a student. Violators can lose all federal funding, although no school has ever lost funding for that reason.

For decades, victims' rights advocates and journalists have fought the broad application of those rules. In 1996, editors at Miami University's student newspaper sued after the school refused to provide disciplinary records spanning three years. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that such records are not educational records and should be made public.

When the U.S. Department of Education sued to stop Miami from releasing the records, Congress intervened and changed the law.

Then-Congressman Mark Foley of Florida introduced the amendment that made parts of some records public: names, types of offenses and sanctions in cases of violent offenses.

More than 15 years later, and despite clear direction from Congress and the courts, universities still keep such records secret.

Federal rules say that colleges "may" release these records. At public colleges, state records laws determine whether a school must release records. No state has a specific exemption allowing schools to withhold disciplinary-board outcomes, although some have laws that allow "education records" to be withheld. Nothing in Ohio law allows schools to withhold disciplinary records for those found responsible for violent offenses.

At private colleges, administrators are allowed to make the call about how much -or how little - to release. But they are not prohibited from releasing disciplinary-board outcomes, as some suggest.

"There's the statute, and then there's what the Department of Education says about it," Ohio Attorney General DeWine said. "They make it more restrictive probably than what Congress ever intended, at least when the bill was passed."

The author of the law, former U.S. Sen. James L. Buckley, of Sharon, Conn., told the SPLC last week that colleges and universities have "twisted" FERPA by invoking it to withhold vast numbers of non-academic records. He said it never was his intent to protect cases of disciplinary offenses.

"If someone commits a crime, I don't see any rationale for treating students differently than you treat anyone else," Buckley said. "I hope somebody in Congress will take an interest in the entire law and rewrite the blessed thing to make it clear that you are talking about certain narrow areas of information."

Students at Columbia University in New York City are so frustrated by the lack of transparency that some wrote on bathroom stalls the names of students found responsible for sexual assaults. University officials painted over the names, saying it was a FERPA violation.

No law requires colleges to disclose aggregate statistics about how many disciplinary cases they handle or how often they find students responsible. Congress had an opportunity to address the secrecy when it considered amendments to the Violence Against Women Act, which went into effect this year.

An amendment that would have required disclosure was removed amid concerns that it could have a chilling effect if victims did not believe that reporting an offense would result in serious punishment.

The secrecy of the campus judicial process has created a system that students and the public cannot trust, said Carolyn Carlson, a Kennesaw State (Ga.) University journalism professor who, in the 1990s, led reporters' efforts to make the disciplinary system more transparent.

"As long as it's a secret system, they can't see how everybody's being treated," Carlson said. "They have to take somebody else's word that they're being treated fairly."

Waiting for justice

When the campus judicial process breaks down, it affects the victims of violent offenses and the accused, as well as all of their family members who deal with the aftermath. Students and families are confused by the process, not knowing their rights or how to move forward with their lives on a campus that they feel has betrayed them.

That is certainly the case for Mike and Sheila Galat, who now measure time in the months since their son Josiah's death at the University of Toledo.

This is month 23, and they feel like they're running out of options. They asked police at the University of Toledo to continue investigating, but nothing seems to be happening. University officials have kept some records from the case private. Prosecutors consider it an open case, but they need new evidence to move forward.

"It's not gonna bring Josiah back; it's not gonna make us feel better. But if you do the crime, there should be a punishment for what you do," Mike Galat said.

For the Miami student who sued her college, more than three years after she reported her sexual assault, she still has moments when she suddenly breaks down crying without knowing exactly why.

The emotional aftermath of her assault caused her to miss considerable class time, and her grades have suffered. She has tightened her circle of friends and is still afraid to trust men or even consider dating.

She says she has remained a student at Miami because she loves some of her teachers and her close friends and roommates who have remained loyal. She has felt some resentment from a few people who know that she continues to fight the university over the handling of her case, but she has no regrets.

"This has happened to too many girls on this campus," she said. "And I'm going to keep fighting to help the victims."

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